April 08, 2006

Final Four pictures

I know, I supposedly closed the topic of college basketball for the season, but I finally got my Final Four pictures back.

Everything begins with the tickets. Your currently looking at $1,200 worth of glossy printing paper with fancy graphics and logos, complete with holograms imbedded to make the tickets authentic. After having a near heart attack getting these babies from EBay we finally got them and were headed towards Indy.

So we arrive in Indianapolis and first off, we lucked out on the parking. We exited near the Dome and when we pulled off we saw nothing but $20 and $25 lots for parking. But we pushed on and found a $5 lot only about six blocks from the Dome. Heck yeah! We milled about, waiting for the 6:07 tipoff time for Florida and George Mason. The time finally arrived and we proceeded to the gate. This picture doesn't really do justice to the crush of people that were in line to get in. Basically your fitting 43,000 people into a space of a city block. It was crowded. But this is our entrance. The Road to the Final Four ended at the RCA Dome, and we were heading in, anxious to see the view from our seats.

Well, here is the view and really, a camera with a stock lens doesn't do much justice. I would guess we were about 150 feet from center court. The interesting part is that we technically faced the side stands that you see in the lower left hand corner (view the hand rail for reference), so you had to watch the whole game at a 30 degree angle. Had this been a Colts football game, our tickets would have been at about the 50-yard line, beautiful seats. All in all, it was lower dome, but at an angle your not used to seeing on TV. Of course, you could remedy that just by watching anyone of the jumbo trons which showed the CBS feed sans Nantz and Packer commentary.